A number of fan suggestions came together to make this chapter happen. Special thanks to RubyGloom7 and Dudeaga.


Robin For Exalt

"Marijuana is not a drug. I used to suck dick for coke. Now that's an addiction, man. You ever sucked some dick for marijuana? I didn't think so." -Bob Saget-


"I understand you're working for Vaike." Chrom got straight to the point.

"I do no such thing, and I find almost all of his policies to be abhorrent." Laurent denied it. "I'm simply dating his daughter."

"But you have been spending a LOT of time with his campaign team?"

"Calling it a team is being extremely generous." More of a mob, really.

"Rambling Vaike supporters just stormed my throne room and demanded to know why I want to push their grandparents off a cliff…I don't suppose you know what that's about…"

"Vaike misinterpreted the rule removing claims arising under the Affordable Healer Act from the court of common pleas," Laurent explained. "He was unaware that its standard practice for complex statutes to create their own enforcement agencies with their own administrative law judges and courts of limited jurisdiction. His interpretation was that a hierarch could deny vital services with no judicial oversight or review on-the-record, if one so much as offended his family name."

"I signed the law, and I don't understand most of what you just said."

"That would be one of the fundamental problems with the law." Laurent opined. Vaike can be an imbecile, but the people who make our laws really should have some idea what they do. "At its outset the premise was flawed. If you wanted healing to be affordable you had to govern against the interests of the insurers making it unaffordable. Write them out of the equation; not make more people use their product and accept without contention that the product is a prerequisite to access. All you've done is create a cost-shifting mechanism to hide the inflated expense."

"That's what Robin said. And if we had followed her plan there would have been NO change in the law, because the hierarchs never would have let a proposal against the interest of insurers see the light of day," this Chrom understood. "Some change is better than no change. You understand this, don't you? How this game is played? That's why you've been playing all sides and hedging your bets with every campaign…"

"…Your Majesty…I would never…"

"There's no need to deny it." Chrom wasn't mad. "Nothing will really change. Who advises counts for more than who governs. Vaike won't be so bad so long as he is surrounded by the right people. This is what you have been thinking, yes?"

"Your...insights...are uncanny."

"I'm not half as dumb as Robin would have you believe. Now listen and listen well. Vaike will pay no heed to one who speaks to him of facts and theories, and the only opinion Robin trusts is her own. With Vaike your knowledge will be as pearls before swine, and with Robin it will be ridiculed and ignored. I will listen. I will be moved. Pledge for me, and I will raise you to Grandmaster of the Realm."

"You're trying to buy my support with patronage." Laurent saw through the ploy.

"Patronage is such a dirty word," Chrom laid on the charm. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not handing out positions of power to every fence-sitting Maribelle. I seek only the best and brightest to give my counsel. It is out of deepest respects for what you would bring to my administration that I extend this offer."

"What about mother?"

"what about her?"

"Why me and not her?"

"Miriel lacks the social intelligence to be a public figure. She'd be suitable for a behind-the-scenes job in policy research and law review, but it wouldn't do to have her as a diplomat or as a liaison," Chrom had considered it. "You're the full package."

"And Robin?"

"…Can no longer serve as my right hand after openly contesting my throne. I'll knight her and give her Frederick's old post—Lord Commander of the Ylissean Guard is as good a use for her as any—but her grandmaster days are over."

"...I see…" Laurent needed some time to gather his thoughts. "May I…have a moment to think this through?"

"YOU JUST WAIT TILL I TELL YOUR FATHER!" Sumia came in shouting,

"Ow-Ow-OW!" Cynthia cried from Maribelle pulling her by the ear.

"You are in BIG trouble mister!" Maribelle ignored Cynthia and scolded her son; also being pulled by the ear.

"Awwww; come on Ma! Everyone does it; its no big deal!" Brady grumbled.

"You think it over while I see what this is about." Chrom sighed and turned his attention to family affairs. "What happened?"

"You are not going to believe what Frederick caught our children doing!" Maribelle huffed. "This behavior is totally UNACCEPTABLE!"

"Cynthia and Brady? Damn." it sounded to Chrom as though he had just lost a bet. "I owe you 100 gold Sumia. I thought for sure he was gay..."

"Why does everybody think that!? I'm just sensitive!"

"What!? No…we didn't catch them doing THAT!" Maribelle did that thing she does where she turns beat-red. "My idiot son and your daughter were smoking marijuana cigarettes. Reefer. Like…like common hoodlums!" She was SO mad.

"…Nice..." Chrom had new-found respect for Brady. "Do you still have any?"

"CHROM!" Sumia lowered the boom on him.

"Oh…right…I mean I Raised You better then That! I'm really disappointed…or something…"

"This is serious!" Sumia insisted. Maribelle had her all worked up. "Our daughter is a drug addict!"

"Bullshit our daughter is a drug addict. She smokes weed." Chrom could care less. Its not like she was getting hopped up on pills or snorting powder. "You don't do any real drugs, do you honey?"

"Nope!"

"…There ya go…"

"Marijuana is ILLEGAL!" Maribelle lectured. "Its dangerous and unhealthy and low-class, and people who need to use it to be happy are losers."

"You don't do it because you need it to be happy. You do it because its fun." Cynthia said something so simple, it was brilliant.

"Same reason you drink wine with them socialites; ain't no one calling you a loser." Brady agreed.

"Wine is sophisticated!" Maribelle failed to see the similarity.

"And it isn't ILLEGAL." Sumia added.

"You do know the only reason marijuana is illegal is so that we can justify having as many lawmen as we have and keep poor people in prison, right?" Chrom knew Cynthia and Brady had nothing to fear from being caught; they were highborn. If Frederick had found two street kids lighting up, they'd be spending the next 19 months in prison. Or dead for "resisting arrest."

"Oh don't even START with that!" Sumia had married Chrom with an explicit understanding that certain things were going to change when he became a father. "Just because you were a full-blown degenerate when you dated Robin, doesn't mean you can teach my little girl that…"

"Kids; do you want to know the truth about Marijuana?" Sumia had just flipped Chrom's Brutally Honest switch. "Its…its just GREAT. It makes food taste better. It makes music sound better. It makes sex feel better. Gods; it makes sex feel SO much better. Its less impairing then alcohol and doesn't make you throw up or want to hit something. People have been using it for thousands of years to make life better."

"OKAY;well…this has been...oh my, look at the time!" Maribelle excused herself. "Come Brady, you really shouldn't be listening to such..."

"Stay. Your king commands it." Chrom pulled rank.

"If that's how it is, why is it illegal?" Chrom had Brady's attention.

"The first criminalization laws were passed shortly after the end of Taguel slavery," Chrom explained. "It became illegal to take away their rights and force them to work for nothing outright. But forced labor was still allowed in prisons. Well eventually the hierarchs figured out that if they made a law which criminalized something everyone was doing and selectively enforced it against the underclass, they could stop the Taguel from climbing the social ladder AND fill Ylisse's prisons with so many bodies that chain-gangs could do the work of former slaves."

"Don't listen to any of this." Maribelle told Brady. "Smoking is bad for you."

"So is getting blackout drunk on whiskey and passing out in a bar, but you don't go to jail for it!" Brady shot back. "There's no more taguel. Or chain-gangs. Why is it still illegal?"

"Those were just local laws. The national ban didn't come until the reign of Exalt Mikolos IV." Fuck that Guy. Chrom had no love for that particular ancestor. "When Mikolos ordered the first crusade against Plegia, half of Ylisse applauded his efforts to combat the Grimleal threat. And half the country called it the senseless violence of a mad zealot. There was protest and civil unrest and a deep rift in the mood of the country; some abandoned the Ylissean way altogether and formed their own communes where they did no business with the guilds and paid no homage to The Crown. Technically, they weren't doing anything illegal. But Mikolos wanted them punished. Mikolos noticed something: all of the Ylisseans who were running away to join hippy communes and showing up outside his palace calling him a murderer were smoking weed. If smoking weed were illegal, he could lawfully disband their communes and disrupt their protests. Thinking this, Mikolos declared marijuana use to be a national crisis and its users to be violent criminals. The rest, as they say, is history."

"That's SO wrong! Someone should do something about that!" Cynthia thought the whole thing was very unheroic. "You're The King! Why don't you just make it legal?"

"The last time I tried, the hierarchs threatened to disinherit my entire bloodline." It wans't as though Chrom hadn't made the attempt. "…Wait a damn minute…Robin got rid of bloodright to the throne with this democracy business. My whole bloodline is already disinherited."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"SWEET! I can legalize weed! Laurent; with me!"

"I suddenly find myself most inclined to take up the position of grandmaster." Laurent was agreeable to the change of law. "Good sir Brady; see if Gaius still has any of that Big Bubba Budz Master Kush. I'll tell Kjelle to spread the word. We shall celebrate this triumph with festivities of exceeding excellence!"

...And then they were gone…

"Laurent and Kjelle smoke!?" Maribelle and Sumia and were dumbfounded.

"Yep yep yep! Ummmm…Why wouldn't they?" Cynthia was that silly combination of cheerful and confused that made her Cynthia.

"Laurent…isn't a low-class degenerate…" Maribelle couldn't wrap her head around it. "He's educated. And really, really smart."

"Everyone from our generation smokes weed." Brady informed his elders.

"Kjelle is an athlete." Sumia couldn't imagine the girl allowing such abuse of her perfectly conditioned body. "Does Sully know?"

"Everyone from our generation smokes weed."

"...Not Lucina..."

"EVERYONE from our generation smokes weed."